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CRM Idol

If you are interested in CRM and aren’t already reading the work of Brian Vellmure, you should be. Brian scored a home-run with this post answering the question, “What’s the best CRM?” It’s a must read for customers, and a great perspective for vendors to adopt. Without question, this post is one of the best CRM posts I have have read in ages.

It is accurate, realistic, and practical. More significantly, the whole psychology & practice applies to any business app selection, not just CRM. It should be kept at hand for customers to read, and read by the rest of us as vendors and consultants to keep our focus directed correctly.

The very best part of his approach is that it is also the way that we should approach and answer prospects any time we are asked, “What’s the best X?” for technology.

You’ve all heard the term ‘solution fit’, but let me introduce you to the term ‘Situational Leadership’, which is what Brain’s demonstrated in this post. When we’re asked to guide organizations in decision-making and selections, it isn’t about walking in the door to provide answers. Situational Leadership means that you work to help customers figure out what are the right questions they should be asking themselves. “What are we really trying to accomplish with our customers? (our culture, our budget, our processes, our people, and our goals and objectives?)”

There is no single, ‘best’ answer to anything, and this is most especially true when we’re asked to weigh the merits of one product or another for a client’s needs. Fit is indeed determined by need and goals. Brian’s more accurate refinement of the question leads to a critical shift in perspective for those looking for an answer. It’s not about the answers – it really is about the questions you’re asking:

“How can we get a deeper understanding of our prospects and customers, create a well crafted vision of how to listen and respond better, and enable people throughout our entire organization to execute in the most efficient. effective, and profitable way?”

Adjust your question slightly and adjust your outcome significantly.

ARE YOU HELPING YOUR CUSTOMERS ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS, OR JUST TOSSING OUT ANSWERS ABOUT YOUR PRODUCTS?

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Note: This year’s CRM Idol lucky winner will also receive four hours of of free consultantion by phone with Brian, too!

This challenge isn’t at all impossible, plus I PROMISE that it will be both an educational and valuable exercise for any of you who pick up the thrown gauntlet. As well, likelihood is extremely high that you will have new &/or improved narratives to use in your marketing, demos, and training videos.

First a small disclaimer to frame this up: As you know, I don’t participate in either the CRM Idol contest judging or reviews. (Although I do vote on finalists at the end of the competition.) There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is that as the CRM Idol Community Manager, it is very important that I keep my focus on each of you as people, rather than vendors of solutions. Which is not to say that I don’t discuss any CRM or Enterprise 2.0 vendors with the Judges in a professional context as industry colleagues – of course I do. But during CRM Idol season, with the panelists and judges I do my best to limit discussions about contestants to pointing out their feedback on experiences gained through participation, and highlighting examples of their contributions to the competition and the entire CRM community.

But during the off-season, you’re all fair game!

I can, will, and do, test and review offerings in my professional capacity. But my approach to assessment of products is much different from how the Judges approach and evaluate it, mostly because I’m deep in the trenches servicing CRM customers daily. Perspectives are different when you are the one selling, designing, implementing, and supporting social business, CRM, and Enterprise solutions. The CRM Idol judges offer you the 10,000′ vision and strategy perspective, while I am digging around with the wiring 5′ under the hood from the consultant’s vantage point.

I’m going to let you in on a secret that is both a coaching guide and your challenge:

It doesn’t matter what CRM or SCRM product I review, I use the same scenario as my testing framework for every single offering. His, yours & the other guy’s. And this is it:

Why do I use this ‘old school, traditional’ CRM process flow as a testing framework methodology?

Because I have used this same trade show scenario in hundreds of demos myself to tell an ‘end-to-end’ story about CRM.

It might not be a trade show, but ALL organizations have events of some sort or another. The events vary, but the end-to-end processes don’t change much.

That’s a screen shot from one of my demos. During the demo, I click into each and every one of those icons to show features & functionality while I am telling a use case story.

The flow above is pretty much the same for marketing campaigns, new product launches, promo code sales, etc.

(Some orgs may not create quotes, credit checks or order acknowledgements, but those are usually backend processes anyway, so they are there as placeholders for integration examples with ERP/Order Entry systems.)

Which of these same processes, functions, features and analytics can I do? Which ones are missing?

If any are missing, are they in planned development? Can I integrate with other products that fill in the gaps? If so, which ones?

How would I implement this in your product?

Can I configure &/or customize rules, logic, and flow?

Can I set data requirements or standards to collect/store what I need at each step of the process flow and the underlying processes, too?

How would I migrate data to your offering? Is the data information architected well for integrations?

Can I get the reports and data I need to do a robust analysis of the whole flow and select processes/phases?

Do I like the user interface? Is it intuitive as I work through & navigate this flow?

How would I fit your innovations into this traditional example of a CRM flow.

Where are the logical spots to incorporate your social capabilities into my story & demo?

How could this process flow be improved and made more efficient using your Product/Service?

So there it is – your challenge, should you choose to accept it. Step back and review your product with a proven use case story like the one above.

Most of you won’t put tickmarks beside all of these processes and features or you’d already be selling like the big platform players, (and for the record, in 15 years I’ve only worked with one product to date that did all of this easily, so don’t be discouraged – very few other vendors could check every box either). But… you can write your own new narrative about the things you can do innately, and via integrations, and craft kick-ass use case demos!

For those of you who are real keeners, I’ve created a slide deck for you with loads more coaching, strategy, and examples for telling more compelling CRM and social business stories.

It is up to you to decide if you’d like to share your discoveries & experience if you take on this challenge, but I’d be interested if you are willing. It’d be fun to compare notes between contestant perspectives & learning, wouldn’t it? I know I’d love to see that trade show image totally reworked with a flow that demonstrates your own compelling use case. Tell us a story.

Having spent > a decade designing and implementing highly configurable workflow, I was instantly and immediately impressed with the simple process design functionality @Podio offers. Building flows and forms is so easy that most users can learn in a single session, and ultimately build apps to be shared on the developer network. Ideal for verticals. They won’t even know they’ve become ‘developers’ overnight. It’s that simple.

As a process workflow app expert (yeah, I said it because I earned that badge in the trenches,) I’m possibly far more critical than most would be and did offer up some critiques as Podio launched publicly. The CEO, Jon Froda, not only responded, but quickly organized a debrief meeting with development staff. I’ve been impressed with their follow through since.

My biggest complaint at the time was the fact that users would grab apps from the store that were empty, and lacking sample data. Bewildering for those unfamiliar with workflow processes. They’ve since begun to populate web store apps with samples in some cases, offering start-up text guides in the others. Another issue was the inability to add calculated fields to forms in support of pipeline reports and the like. Within weeks, the calc fields were added, and with more functionality and formula options than expected.

I walked them through an end-to-end use case I use when testing any ‘social crm’ offering which really piqued the Podio team’s interest. I put every platform I test through and end-to-end trade show campaign to see where their weaknesses are as a practical social business tool for typical CRM processes. The Podio team jumped at the chance to see how it works in a fully functional ‘traditional’ system, pausing to take screen shots and ask many questions along the way. I’m happy to report that most aspects of the test can now be done within Podio, and with the ability to create reports to measure most of the metrics for each outcome.

I’d also like to point out that interest is so high that one of the CRM Idol semi-finalists, (but I won’t say which one), had me tutor and walk members of their own R&D team through Podio for several hours – including app building and the app store, for ideas and understanding. Frankly, I think they’re wise to look closely at how Podio is doing it right, and might be still wiser to consider a partnership with them.

Although I rely upon an enormously powerful collaboration platform for my daily work with my primary employer and partners, I’ve shifted my other project and contract consulting work over to Podio, and use it almost as often as my main work intranet. When time permits, I’ve got more than a few vertical apps in mind to build & share myself. Because it’s just so darn easy.

Just this week, Podio released a major face lift and UI design overhaul. They continue to improve based on user and developer feedback, at a rate that few other emerging tech companies can match. The new FlexioGrid is fluid, scalable, and elegant – a framework that will enable many future design enhancements.

Rawn’s right. Podio is evidence of a significant change in how apps can be developed and shared. Check it out if you haven’t yet. It’s going to challenge some of the more popular offerings that Rawn also mentioned in his article.

Like this:

For anyone who has any interest at all in emerging technologies in social business in general, and CRM offerings in particular, it’s time to reap the the benefits of the CRM Idol 2011 contest, by learning what the experts’ initial feedback is and adding your own insights for the Judges’ consideration.

I’ve been fascinated by the concept of CRM Idol since the idea was first launched in the Spring for many reasons, not the least of which is the opportunity for solution shoppers and analysts to tap into Paul Greenberg’s gathered army of industry experts acting as judges, panelists and mentors, for their views on some of the smaller/newer CRM offerings. Patience has paid off and the judges have started to post their concise, candid first reviews of the companies that have presented their wares so far. This is a valuable contribution to the ecosystem with the joint wisdom of this élite crowd of leaders like Brent Leary, Esteban Kolsky, and Jesus Hoyos, sharing the highlights and challenges of each, as Paul explains:

“Each review has been signed off by all the CRM Idol Primary Judges – currently for the Americas and in early September for EMEA. So these are all jointly done in effect. They represent a distillation of the understanding of the companies and their products from the principals who did the demos and briefing with us throughout last week and through the end of this week.”

As the judging moves toward the selection of semi-finalists, the panelists will also be reading your comments and opinions on the entries, which will factor in to the eventual choices. Reviews are being posted at a rate of 2-4 daily, so check often, read through them carefully to learn how each company might have solutions for your own clients or business, and speak up with questions and direct experience. It’s a rare opportunity all the way around for anyone who gets involved. Now it is your turn to take part.

Like this:

Paul Greenberg’s CRM Idol is a brilliant concept as competition with an initiative to both identify and showcase CRM and SCRM related start ups. Fortunate candidates gain exposure and support from investors, influencers, technology/strategic partners, media connections, etc. But there is more to explore if we look at the contest from the inside of the industry outwards. In addition to the the unique opportunity that CRM Idol has offered these emerging companies, it’s also been an interesting example of what candidates should and should not be doing, with some startling preliminary results so far.

In short, many of the candidates could have done more to maximize their exposure with the related high value FREE PR.

Using start up Next Principles Event Monitoring offering, NP CEO Satya Krishnaswamy and I have been measuring CRM Idol impact from the perspective of the event organizers and judges for several months now. While working in the spring with @NextPrinciples on some design/development/use ideas, I thought what better example to use for monitoring events via social channels than to select an event-driven by social business industry leaders? There were some good reasons for picking CRM Idol specifically for this experiment:

The teams of judges, panelists, mentors, sponsors offer a rare grouping of many of the very best minds in the social business arena. How does that play out in their own event promotion?

The high level of interest in technologies and innovations geared towards bridging the gaps between traditional and socialized crm

The opportunity for the candidates to show their own social/crm savvy as participants in the event

The Basics

Adopting the persona of Paul Greenberg his very own self, we created an event template in April including several of the main influencer judges as ’employees’ tasked with running, promoting, monitoring and following up on the event. Related blogs (10 ‘company’ and 14 ‘non-company’) were identified as key industry news sources, twitter keywords identified and began watching the results. Here are a few of the preliminary highlights from the competition during its first week of demo judging:

Aside from the ‘company’ event tweeters, 570 more people tweeted about CRM Idol resulting in a 12% follower growth rate for the specific event handle ‘@pgreenbe’

Oddly, we would have predicted both social and SCRM to have been included in more related tweets considering today’s hash tag economy, but ‘latam’ made a surprisingly strong appearance, likely due to Jesus Hoyos influence

The Candidates ‘Social Event’ Performance

Interesting – and disturbing – was the lack of promotion participation by the real competition candidates themselves. Using some of the measurement results along with good old-fashioned human observation it’s clear that many of these organizations missed the boat when it came to using this as a social PR opportunity to show that they’re walking their talk as part of their own strategies for CRM. Relatively few pushed one or more blog posts about being selected to take part, or related their demo experiences so far, almost none tagged their demo videos on YouTube with CRM Idol to maximize hit results beyond their inclusion on the CRM Idol site, and the level of engagement with CRM Idol audience/fans/followers via twitter was astonishingly low. In fact, most candidates barely shared news or excitement about the event at all.

There was one noticeable exception in Aplicor’s response to the event chatter. Marketing Director Tracy Fawcett not only engaged with the RT’ing audience and other candidates, she followed up with personalized invites to advocates and candidates alike to connect on other channels like LinkedIn. You know – cross pollinating and building relationships in a genuine way via social? Yeah, like that.

To some, the social crm (read business) community may seem to be a bit insular, and of course the candidates’ current focus is on learning from and impressing the influencers and investors, but I’m hoping they’ll be wise enough to spend time after the competition in building additional strategic partnerships, or just pausing to share their stories with those who expressed interest in their success during the competition. Never know who might help you build relationships with more leads and customers.

Advice for the Candidates

It’s a simple concept: For start ups participating in an event, especially one like CRM Idol that has a built in network of influential broadcasters – grab the free PR and run with it! Talk it up at all stages.

Pre-event

Post blogs! Share your stories about being accepted to present, your demo prep, your expectations. Hell show your belly and admit to being nervous, if you are.

Get to know the other candidates/presenters. Don’t just stalk them surreptitiously and mock their videos. Make an effort to explore commonalities and differences beyond their solutions. Who is their customer and can you share them? Who are these other entrepreneurs who are just as eager as yourselves to be change agents? What can you learn from their experiences?

Don’t just wait for the event to jump into tagging – add ‘CRM Idol’ to videos, images, tutorials early on so that the chatter starts – and the impact will last long beyond the event.

During the event

Carve time out each day to respond to people who’ve tweeted about your participation. Especially those who’ve expressed further interest in you or your products.

Wish the others luck. Did I really have to say that? Good sportsmanship is always a sign of a good leader.

Tweet, write, update at least a few times a day. Interested people who aren’t watching in real-time will surely check the social channels for updates, won’t they?

Thank the organizers. And the judges. And the panelists. And anyone else who has shown the slightest bit of attention your way.

Post Event

Thank the organizers/participants again – in detail. Write about it again in 1, 3, 6 months and share the impact it’s had on you and your company. Did one key conversation or insight radically change your strategy? How’s that working out?

Provide the organizers real feedback. Did you have an increase in sales? Did you form new partnerships? Let them know if you got results, even if you didn’t ‘win’.

Paul and the rest of the CRM Idol team have done an outstanding job of providing real value to the enterprise ecosystem. I’d like to hear their own observations on how candidates are using this opportunity to their best benefit to build relationships directly and indirectly. But for now, I’ll just issue this challenge to the contestants:

Walk your talk. Demonstrate that you do understand all aspects of social impact on your own business. Work it.